The Kingswood Newsletter

Wellbeing and Community Engagement

Patrick Halpin 

Assistant Principal 

We are now at the end of Week 4 and time is flying by.  We hope everybody has enjoyed their day off school as we host our annual STEAM Conference and that you get lots of rest this weekend. 

School Review

The School Improvement Team (SIT) have begun their hard work of gathering information and preparing our self-evaluation as part of the school review. 

  • Students have provided feedback through identifying how school makes them feel (Prep), naming their favourite and least favourite things about school (Year 1), completing surveys to dig deeper into issues that were raised through the Resilience Survey in 2017 (Year 2 and Year 3), responding to interview questions by the Student Representative Council (Years 4-6) and evaluating how well Kingswood demonstrates our values (Years 4-6).
  • Parents were given an opportunity to provide their feedback at the Q&A with Principal Class, which was live streamed via the Parent Club Facebook Page.
  • Staff were surveyed to examine the issues raised in the Staff Opinion Survey in 2017.
  • The Leadership Team gathered data on how their work is impacting on increased teacher capacity and, ultimately, on student outcomes.
  • The Maths and Literacy Teams examined data to identify enablers and barriers to our progress in these curricular areas.

We also had a visit from our Senior Education Improvement Leader, Jen McCrabb, this week who had some questions for our leaders:

  • What does good pedagogical practice look like and what are the components of “good practice” for our school?
  • Do we as teachers know what differentiated, effective, engaging and challenging student activities look like? How do we know?
  • What do we see and hear as we walk through classrooms?
  • How can we tell if the students are learning?
  • Are our observations accurate and do they provide us with a basis for feedback?
  • How do we provide useful feedback to teachers to support them to improve?

 

As we walked through the school, we identified examples of good practice and challenged each other to find ways to improve even further.  This led to a robust discussion that will further support our self-evaluation.

 

The SIT will meet again in the coming weeks to finalise the self-evaluation in preparation for our review, which will take place in Term 4.  This process will also identify priority areas for the next fours year so is a very important piece of work and one that should be given the necessary amount of time and energy.

Principal’s Day Celebration

Thank you to everybody who contributed to our Principal’s Day Celebration (Go Tiges!).  The staff, parents and students got the opportunity to acknowledge all of the hard work that Mr. Cox has done since taking on the Acting Principal’s role at a very busy time for our school. 

Crazy Sock Day

There were stripes, spots, animals, food, cartoon characters and lots more!  The Mayor, Steve Staikos came to visit along with Marion from Make a Difference Dingley Village and had his photograph taken with some of the students from Grade 2.  He was very impressed by the engaging learning spaces he encountered and the high levels of energy he felt. 

Marion will visit our assembly next Friday, August 17th, to tell us know much money we raised in aid of a very well deserving cause, Make a Difference Dingley Village. 

Shake n Wake

We have noticed a decline in the number of students participating in Shake n Wake every Wednesday.  While this is to be expected as the novelty wears off, we are keen to get it going again.  Mr. Nugent and Ms. Hill have started a Thursday lunch time club where they will teach dances to some of our favourite songs.  They are currently working on Cotton Eye Joe and students are encouraged to attend.  Thanks to all of the lead dancers who helped those of us who got stuck with the dance moves this week!

Special Celebrations Working Party

Our Celebrations Taskforce is very excited about the upcoming Moon Festival in September.  We will be organising lunchtime arts and crafts sessions where students will make lanterns and colour pictures based on stories that will be used to decorate the hall.  We will have a picnic on the Oval (weather permitting) and all children who celebrate Moon Festival will be invited to attend in their traditional dress.  Moon cakes are traditionally shared on this festival to wish friends and family members a long and happy life. 

Moon Festival will take place on September 24th but, because that is during our term holidays, Kingswood Primary School will mark the event from Monday, September 10th through to Friday, September 14th.  If anybody is interested in helping us organise or run any of the events, please let me know. 

Moving Kids from Anxious to Resilient

Thank you to everybody who joined us on Wednesday night for our presentation by Michael Grose and Dr. Jodi Richardson.  I took lots of notes and will take some time to reflect on how I can improve my practice over the coming weeks.  I always enjoy reading through my notes and considering how I could have used the strategies to better support students in the past – this then helps me to plan my future actions.

I have received lots of positive feedback from parents over the past couple of days but would like to formalise it.  It would be wonderful, therefore, if you could take a couple of minutes to complete this survey.  The information we gather will help us to improve the process next time.